animal : any of a kingdom (Animalia) of living things including many-celled organisms and often many of the single-celled ones (as protozoans) that typically differ from plants in having cells without cellulose walls, in lacking chlorophyll and the capacity for photosynthesis, in requiring more complex food materials (as proteins), in being organized to a greater degree of complexity, and in having the capacity for spontaneous movement and rapid motor responses to stimulation — Webster See also OneLook, Free Dictionary, Wiktionary, Urban Dictionary

Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia (also called Metazoa). All animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs: they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance. — Wikipedia

Zoology or animal biology is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. — Wikipedia

Pet or companion animal is an animal kept primarily for a person’s company, protection, or entertainment rather than as a working animal, livestock, or laboratory animal. Popular pets are often noted for their attractive appearances, intelligence, and relatable personalities.

Two of the most popular pets are dogs and cats. A cat lover is known as an ailurophile and a dog lover is known as cynophile. Other animals commonly kept include: rabbits, ferrets, pigs; rodents, such as gerbils, hamsters, chinchillas, rats, and guinea pigs; avian pets, such as parrots, passerines, and fowl; reptile pets, such as turtles, lizards and snakes; aquatic pets, such as fish, freshwater and saltwater snails, and frogs; and arthropod pets, such as tarantulas and hermit crabs. Small pets may be grouped together as pocket pets, while the equine and bovine group include the largest companion animals.

Pets provide their owners (or “guardians”) both physical and emotional benefits. Walking a dog can provide both the human and the dog with exercise, fresh air, and social interaction. Pets can give companionship to people who are living alone or elderly adults who do not have adequate social interaction with other people. There is a medically approved class of therapy animals, mostly dogs or cats, that are brought to visit confined humans, such as children in hospitals or elders in nursing homes. Pet therapy utilizes trained animals and handlers to achieve specific physical, social, cognitive or emotional goals with patients. — Wikipedia

Animal Vision(2/12/2017)-What if you could see like an animal? Well, now you can! Check out these YouTube 360° Videos from Marshmallow Laser Feast entitled In the Eyes of the Animal. The videos are “experiential” because they were created to be an art installation. Here’s a more “explanatory” YouTube 360° video from BuzzFeed that’s shows what it’s … Continue reading Animal Vision

Arbornautics(5/7/2018)-Traditional news stories usually cover a single subject or the straightforward relationship between two subjects. However, every once in awhile, a story comes along that crams a deceptive number of subjects and interesting relationships into a tiny space. Exploring stories like that can be an adventure. Here’s a wonderful, five minute clip from Seeker that’s … Continue reading Arbornautics

Barnum’s Critters(8/24/2018)-Barnum’s animals have escaped! Here’s an update about the situation from Inside Edition. Of course, unlike the iconic crackers themselves, the news about them is bittersweet because The Greatest Show on Earth ceased operation back in May 2017. Have you ever wondered what happened to Barnum & Bailey’s real animals? Here’s a short segment from … Continue reading Barnum’s Critters

Best cat toy?(7/21/2017)-This site doesn’t usually deal in silly internet memes (list) like cute cat videos, but it is Friday, and this character on YouTube called FlippyCat went and posted this awesome 360° Video. If the think the dominoes art part is cool, and you want to waste more time, head on over and check out the … Continue reading Best cat toy?

Born in China(4/20/2017)-Want to see something cute? Check out this 360° YouTube Video (Click & hold to explore)! The video is a trailer for Disney’s Born in China (Disney, IMDb, Wikipedia, Fandango). It is narrated by John Krasinski and opens in theaters on Friday, April 21st as part of Disney’s celebration of Earth Day on April 21st … Continue reading Born in China

Cute Critter Break(2/20/2018)-Here in Boston they have a tradition known as February Break (WGBH) — it’s a lot like a Spring Break, but early. It tends to make me itch for a real Spring Break, early. Soon enough! In the meantime, I couldn’t resist compiling about 10 minutes worth of 360° Videos featuring baby animals so that … Continue reading Cute Critter Break

Dogs at Museums(3/26/2018)-Dogs and museums are things that you don’t expect to see in the same sentence very often. However, if you live in the Boston area, then you might have seen them together in the headlines twice lately. The most recent example is the press coverage of the new Museum of Dog that just opened in … Continue reading Dogs at Museums

Happy Summer, Roar!(6/21/2018)-It’s here! It’s officially summer, and that means that it’s time for summer traditions like barbecues, vacations and loving or hating the newest summer blockbusters. For better or worse, they are here, too — it’s time to either rejoice and head to the nearest cineplex or cringe with derision and run away from the latest … Continue reading Happy Summer, Roar!

How Spidey Flies?(7/9/2018)-Have you ever watched a Spider-Man movie and wondered whether real spiders can do anything remotely like what Spidey does? Well, it turns out that they can. However, not even Spidey, or his friends Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, really knew how. No one did, until recently. Just over this past week there have been … Continue reading How Spidey Flies?

Jaws vs. Jellies?(7/28/2017)-Have you noticed that there’s a bit of a shark frenzy going on right now? Of course it is at least partly due to this being Discovery Channel’s Shark Week (Discovery, Wikipedia). The nearly 30 year old event has gotten even more notoriety than usual because of the “Michael Phelps Faster Than a Shark?” publicity … Continue reading Jaws vs. Jellies?

Lions, Tigers & Bears…(12/10/2016)-With the advent of a wide range of 360° cameras has come a plethora of 360° videos about animals with an equally wide range of quality and depth. The majority of them are relatively home grown, predominantly PSA type productions like these about lions and tigers. There are also some interesting examples with higher production … Continue reading Lions, Tigers & Bears…

Lovely Lobsters?(9/16/2017)-Hey, did you know that lobsters are cool creatures? For one thing, they come in a lot of pretty colors. In fact, the New England Aquarium even has a growing collection of rare, brightly colored lobsters. A rare yellow lobster joins New England Aquarium’s multicolored collection (Erica Yee, Boston.com) Ghostly, translucent lobster hauled from ocean … Continue reading Lovely Lobsters?

Nutty Nature News(10/5/2018)-I’ve been updating the “nature” related pages on this site, so I’ve spent an abnormal amount of time perusing nature related sites for the last few weeks. Along the way I came across more than my fair share of odd nature stories. Many of them were viral, so you may have seen some of them … Continue reading Nutty Nature News

Octopuses from Space!(5/20/2018)-Did you hear the one about the octopuses from space? It sounds like the title of a cheesy sci-fi movie, doesn’t it? But it isn’t, this time, or at least, yet. Instead, it’s actually an oddball theory that’s been put forth in a recently published “scientific” article that’s getting quite a lot of buzz in … Continue reading Octopuses from Space!

Planet Earth II(1/30/2017)-One interesting thing that’s been happening recently is that some television shows are being released with 360º features to go along with them. For example, the BBC created a lovely set of six 360º videos to coincide with episodes in their Planet Earth II (BBC) series. In case you haven’t been watching, the new Planet … Continue reading Planet Earth II

Rock n’ roll, noise pollution?(7/15/2018)-Is rock and roll noise pollution? If you are a rock and roll fan, then you probably know that this is a question that AC/DC famously weighed in on in their song Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution (YouTube). If you are a language or communication expert, rock and roll fan or not, you probably … Continue reading Rock n’ roll, noise pollution?

Smart Crows(9/15/2016)-Rare crow shows a talent for tool use Tool-using crow: Rare bird joins clever animal elite (Victoria Gill, BBC News) Scientists Have Found Another Crow That Uses Tools (Ed Yong, The Atlantic) Discovery of species-wide tool use in the Hawaiian crow (Nature) Find out more about crows…

Too many sharks?(8/1/2018)-If you watch a lot of television, then you know that last week was the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. Last year I did a post that coincided with it (Jaws vs. Jellies). However, this year I was leaning towards not doing more of something that is already a tad overdone. The Discovery Channel did add … Continue reading Too many sharks?

Watchable Whales(7/2/2018)-The first week of July is when many Boston area locals head for the hills, or the shore, while vast numbers of tourists flood in to town to visit the Freedom Trail, Haborfest and Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular. Of course, another popular activity is whale watching (Trip Advisor). That is because it’s only a short … Continue reading Watchable Whales

What about animals?(9/8/2017)-Like millions of other people, I’m paying a lot of attention to news about hurricanes right now. Texas is dealing with the aftermath of Harvey while Irma is ravaging everything in its path on its way to Florida. Between that and news about the earthquake in Mexico, it’s hard to find bright spots in ubiquitous … Continue reading What about animals?

Why not butterflies?(8/22/2017)-Now that the eclipse has passed, and we all survived with our vision intact (hopefully), it is time to get back to our regular news, right? Unfortunately, I’m not finding anything in my “go to” news feeds all that inspiring right now. Everything seems to range somewhere between the mundane and the terrifying, so I … Continue reading Why not butterflies?

Biologist have compared the genes of large-beaked Cameroonian finches to those of their smaller-beaked counterparts, found the answer to a 20-year old mystery: 300,000 base pairs, apparently inherited as a unit, always varied between them, and right in the middle of that genetic sequence was the […]

The paleontological site of Somosaguas (Madrid) hosts a large colony of ants of the species Messor barbarus. A study has now revealed that the daily activity of these insects modifies soil composition and therefore influences the results obtained in paleoclimatic studies. The researchers also found […]

It takes energy to make weapons, but it may take even more energy to maintain them. Because leaf-footed bugs drop their legs, it is possible to measure how much energy they allocate to maintaining this appendage that males use to fight other males. […]

A study using animal-attached technology to measure food consumption in four very different wild vertebrates has revealed that animals using a high-risk strategy to find rarer food are particularly susceptible to becoming extinct, as they fail to gather food for their young before they starve. […]

In collaboration with the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, a research group from the UPV/EHU's Plentzia Marine Station has studied the bivalves in the mangroves on both coasts of Nicaragua in order to analyse how they are affected by the pollution carried by rivers. It could be possible […]

The African elephantnose fish generates weak electrical pulses to navigate its environment. This localization sense bears an astonishing similarity to vision, as a study by the University of Bonn now shows. The study demonstrates that different objects have different electrical "colors." Fish use […]

Analysis of ancient DNA of a mysterious extinct monkey named Xenothrix—which displays bizarre body characteristics very different to any living monkey—has revealed that it was in fact most closely related to South America's titi monkeys (Callicebinae). Having made their way overwater to […]

Due to its biodiversity and theoretically huge number of taxa waiting to be discovered, soil fauna has been called the poor man's rain forest. If a researcher cannot head to the tropics but wishes to discover something new, they can take a shovel and start digging in the home forest or meadow. […]

Researchers from the University of Barcelona in collaboration with a team from the Zoological Station Anton Dohrn (Italy) have analysed the impact of diatom algae in the development of Oikopleura dioica (O. Dioica), a type of marine zooplankton invertebrate that plays an important role in the […]

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